Examines the influence that oral language deficits exert on children's ability to learn to read and to develop reading skills. Discusses evidence that points to deficient phonological awareness as the variable that best discriminates children with reading delay. The effects of deficit phonological awareness are described. (Author/CR)

Explores longitudinal effects of television viewing on 1,050 Dutch children's reading comprehension, causal mechanisms that underlie these effects on reading comprehension, and longitudinal effects of television on decoding skills. Surveys children three times at one-year intervals. Suggests that television viewing inhibited development of reading…

This article takes a brief look at the research on using letter-sound blending and word-family reading instruction for teaching word recognition to students with reading difficulties. It then examines the effectiveness of combining these two methods. Ideas for implementing both methods in the special education setting are included. (Contains…

Examines the interrelationships among different enabling skills among children in Latvian kindergartens, and considers how various enabling skills (phonemic awareness, naming, and short-term memory) contribute to explain unique variance in early reading acquisition. Concludes that phonemic awareness seems to be the paramount skill related to…

Examines the relations among phonological awareness, short-term memory, orthographic ability, contextual information, and reading skill in a study of 60 functionally illiterate adults enrolled in Adult Basic Education programs and a group of elementary-school children. Concludes that adults seem to be relying less on phonological decoding, which…

A study examined test-retest reliability, practice effects, and relations among normed measures of word identification and spelling and experimental measures of achievement and reading-related cognitive processing in 78 children (ages 6-8) with reading disabilities. There were strong relations between normed measures of decoding and spelling and…

Presents a study designed to measure to what extent secondary school students' ability to guess the meanings of words in isolation is related to guessing words in context. Finds similarities between strategies used in isolated and contextual situations, but the students also made effective use of context. (MG)

A discussion of methods for assessing students' use of cognitive reading strategies provides suggestions for what to look for, including decoding dysfluency and cognitive strategies used in nonreading contexts, and a three-part approach to conducting such an assessment. (MSE)

Compares use of two decoding strategies in fifth-sixth grade normal and dyslexic children, and younger normals reading-aged-matched to the dyslexic students. Finds dyslexics lag behind age-matched normals in use of both strategies, and behind reading-age-matched normals in use of analogies, but not rules. (RS)

Results of two experiments involving kindergarten and first grade students indicate that oral blending of dictated sounds into consonant-vowel-consonant words was markedly and significantly better when no pauses intervened between sounds than when pauses of one or three seconds intervened. Interactions between pause interval and word familiarity…

A sample of 133 Spanish children (ages 8 to 13) was classified by IQ and reading level and given a lexical processing task. The study found that IQ did not explain differences between learning-disabled (LD) or nondisabled (NLD) children in lexical processing. Lexical and sublexical parameters had a greater influence on LD students than NLD…

Examined whether children with reading problems could be taught to use multiletter patterns in word decoding. Testing used practiced words and similar and dissimilar nonpracticed words. Found that all types of practice were beneficial for the recognition of practiced words transfer to the reading of novel words appeared only when graphemic and…

Elaborates the view that phonological recoding, or print-to-sound translation, is a self-teaching mechanism enabling learners to acquire the orthographic representations necessary for visual word recognition. Discusses developmental properties of phonological recoding, reviews evidence on the importance of cognitive abilities underlying the…

This study used computer word games to train 35 dyslexic readers (mean age 13 years) in automaticity (speed and accuracy) of word recognition. After training, reaction time on the word vocalization and sentence comprehension tasks improved significantly for both trained and untrained stimuli. Results support the automaticity hypothesis. (DB)

After reviewing previous research on the acquisition of vocabulary through contextual clues, research carried out with 429 students in the upper grades of an Italian elementary school is discussed. (12 references) (CFM)